Ten Ton Hammer has posted a new preview of Blizzard Entertainment's Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. Planned for release "soon" on Mac, Windows, and iPad, the free-to-play virtual card game will allow players to build decks centered around one of the nine Warcraft character classes. Duelists will go head to head in card battles for the chance to win new cards.

In a lot of ways, Hearthstone is to CCGs as WoW is to MMOs. It takes an established genre, lops off anything that might be a bit too confusing for anyone not already deeply familiar with gameplay staples, and makes a highly polished, familiar experience out of it.

Since I wasnít able to mess around with the deck building aspects of the game, itís hard to say if the game will have enough depth to really stick in the long term, but at the same time it might not really even need to be a deep game to appeal to a broad audience. Just look at the proliferation of mobile and social games, or even how many formerly non-gaming households adopted the Wii, and thatís all you need to know about why Blizzard chose to keep things simple with Hearthstone.